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Iraqi Dissidents Claim Responsibility for Baghdad Missile Attack
BEIRUT, July 12 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - An Iraqi dissident group says its operatives bombarded President Saddam Hussein's Baghdad palace and other government buildings with rockets Wednesday, in which one person was injured.
In a statement issued in Beirut, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq said its forces fired 16 Katyusha rockets at targets in Baghdad, news agencies reported.
"Iraq's Islamic resistance attacked important and vital Iraqi centers with sixteen 122mm-Katyusha rockets at midnight last night," said Hamed Bayati, the London representative for the Supreme Iraqi Assembly - speculated as a shorthand reference for the Tehran-based Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).
According to the Iranian Student News Agency, ISNA, Bayati said the attacks had targeted "the public security organization, the presidential palace, the radio and television organization and the Iraqi council of ministers' complex."
"This came in response to the escalating repression of the Iraqi nation by the Baathist regime and aimed at breaking the siege on the country's innocent nation," he said.
The official Iraqi News Agency said three missiles, or rockets, fell, one hitting a house with others landing in a street far from any of Saddam's palaces.
Later, the Iraqi News Agency quoted an unnamed Iraqi government official as blaming "criminal killers from the agents of the Iranian regime," the French news agency AFP reported.
Baghdad "reserves the right to retaliate at the appropriate time," the official said, renewing threats of Iraqi retaliation for previous reported Iranian strikes on its territory.
So far, there has been no official reaction from Tehran to the allegations, but Iranian state radio said that, "while Iraq has no proof, it levels such baseless accusations against Iran."
Iran and Iraq host opposition groups fighting each other's government. The neighbors fought a war in 1980-88 that left one million dead and wounded.
A total of 19 Iraqis have been killed, and at least 115 injured, in attacks blamed on Iran since the start of 2000, according to a toll compiled by AFP from official Iraqi statements.
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